Collateral Event of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia - 26 May to 27 November 2016

Annotation by the the artist, René Dürr

Venice Time Space Existence Venice, the aging beauty. I intentionally dedicate my photo series to the city, which lines up biennales for years, and provide time and space for a lot of arts, creativity and vividness.

Rediscover Venice? Unfold new perception? The art is to give new dimension to what was often seen, and that is what I attained with my reportage.

The choice of my photo technique allows to express the atmosphere that Venice offers me, specially during winter months, or in the nights, after disappearance of crowds. The time stands still. The existence of residents and tourists can only be imagined in pictures.

By minute-long exposures everything what moves, fades out into nothing, is transparent or even invisible. The movement of the water is captured, and through that puts buildings and other places distinctly to the center of attention. This context and the magic of black and white images, reproduce almost scary silence that the Venice features at certain times. Yet the presence of the people by the trails they leave behind, is not to deny.

This emptiness, peace and non-existent time witness, make the photographs so timeless.

Photographs of the aging beauty touch us far more than images of other cities. There is so much sky, so much water, the silhouette of bridges, narrow passages, which open the sight onto the open sea. Fog enshrouds parts of the city in a ghostly silence. One is daily overwhelmed with new moods and feelings.

The life takes place on squares, bridges, streets, and narrow, sometimes barely navigable channels. We can only guess what happens behind the facades of Palazzi. We are only visitors. The decay of countless beautiful facades lends a special patina to streets and houses. The vision we have of a city go hazy, and a dream is forming, a dream in which we can lose ourselves in narrow streets.

In Venice, we understand more than anywhere else, how finite, how perishable we are.

How timeless is the future of Venice?

The fear of residents is growing, that they ultimately cannot save their city. Because of the sinking ground on which the Venice is set, the water rises - the city goes under, slowly but steadily.

Is the end imminent for a historically unique experiment of daring pioneers? Takes the lagoon someday back, what man has wrested for a time?

Venice, once Massimo Cacciari said; a philosopher and former mayor of the city; could actually not even exist. It is "a totally unlikely, entirely artificial city", at the same time "a technical masterpiece, the highest manifestation of our capabilities, our spiritual power".

May Venice preserve for many generations, so that people do not lose their homeland. That our descendants can visit this masterpiece, and possibly see it from a very different perspective, with other sensation, as I have done it.